Harley and Me (11 page)

SECTION II

LEAN

•
    
CHAPTER EIGHT
    
•

LEAVING HOME

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

—E. E. CUMMINGS

Day One:
Friday, August 23

Hollywood, California, to Cedar City, Utah: 472 miles

I wake at 3:00
AM
, certain I've slept less than an hour since I turned out the light. The adrenaline has been too much. It's been rousing me every few minutes. I keep thinking about what I may have forgotten or worrying yet again about some far-flung-but-certainly-pending tragedy I cannot possibly control but which, if I worry about it hard enough, I hope to avert.

Without turning on the light, I dress in my armored textile riding pants and jacket and gather my things that have been packed, waiting by the door, for days.

Creeping down the steps of my studio apartment and past the California-perfect pool shaded by citrus trees and bougainvillea, I lug everything I hope to need for this journey. The night is black and utterly silent—amazing considering the place is only a few blocks
off Hollywood Boulevard. I move past the main house, the home of friends who gave me shelter when I separated from J nine months ago. Their dogs bark from inside. I was hoping not to wake anyone, to make as little fuss as possible.

I've been striving to make as little fuss as possible my entire life. But there's something about this trip – about being seen and heard on a motorcycle—that I hope will make me more comfortable with spreading out and genuinely owning my life.

I pull up to Rebecca's house at three thirty. I've been parking my motorcycle at her place since the separation, as I don't have safe parking in Hollywood. Working by the beams of our headlamps, I strap down my T-bag, a smallish soft-sided piece of luggage that slides over my sissy bar. My tank bag attaches with magnets and allows me to read driving directions through the clear plastic sleeve. I check my tire pressure and figure out how to use the Bluetooth device that will let me communicate with Rebecca on the road. I put on extra clothes, worried I'm not dressed warmly enough. It's chilly now and at speeds of seventy will be even colder, yet the day will be in the hundreds by the time we hit Vegas.

We sip coffee, exchanging few words. This five-thousand-mile journey has been a year in the making.

During these final preparations, I'm heartened to realize I know a thing or two about what I'm doing. This aptitude surprises me. I can't help acknowledging that this entire journey has been basically a fluke. Even my friendship with Rebecca is a coincidence. I was the head room parent at the K–8 parochial school both our kids attended and talked her into being the room parent for one of the grades. I knew her to say hello on the schoolyard, but not much else. One day, I emailed a few friends to see if anyone wanted to trot around the high school track with me. One of them was also named Rebecca. “I don't think you meant this for me,” the motorcycle Rebecca wrote back. “But I'd love to join you for a run.” Soon, we were meeting three and four times a week to run together, but as novices, we couldn't jog and talk at the same time for lack of breath. We wore headphones for at
least a year while we pumped our arms and legs around a track. Eventually we turned off the music and started talking.

I initially thought we had little in common. But there's something about sweating next to someone who is struggling just as hard as you, breathing heavily, working intensely, one of us feeling strong one day, the other feeling strong the next, that opens up a kind of willing vulnerability. If you don't have to at look someone, you say things you might keep hidden in a face-to-face setting. We gradually talked of ever-deeper things, exploring ourselves and our lives. We told each other just about every secret we might otherwise hold closely.

• • •

Our motorcycles are finally balanced and packed. We nod at each other and fire up the bikes. Rebecca takes the lead. The first stop is a gas station near the 210 freeway in Pasadena where we meet Edna and George, who will accompany us on part of our journey.

Originally, Rebecca and I had planned to do this trek alone. But George and Edna asked if they could ride to Milwaukee with us. We agreed, knowing that we might be grateful for their help on the road. We have a lot to learn. But by the time we turn our bikes back west and head home some nine days from now, we had better know what we're doing. We're going to be all alone by then.

“Do we know where gas is at each stop?” I quiz George under the jaundiced fluorescent light of the gas station. Since I am on the bike with the smallest tank, I need to ensure we stop every 120 miles or so. The others are on much bigger bikes with ranges of 200-plus miles and may forget that I will run out long before them. I carry a siphon tube in my tank bag in case. If I were to siphon a little gas from Rebecca, we might both make it to the next station. I'm praying we won't need to use it.

George has done much more cross-country motorcycling than the rest of us and is a small, sinewy man, with a long salt-and-pepper ponytail and weathered-brown skin, a stunning blend of Native American
and Japanese heritage. He smiles at Rebecca and me with wrinkled, kind eyes, nodding at my question.

“We'll stop in Barstow,” he tells me. I am comforted to have this one bit of information.

The plan for today will take us through Las Vegas and then up to Cedar City, Utah, where we're expected by friends of Edna and George who will give us hospitality for the night.

“But first we'll stop for lunch at Whiskey Pete's in Primm,” Edna says, referring to the little Vegas-wannabe town populated with low-rent casinos just over the California-Nevada border. We're going to meet up with an Australian couple there, also part of Edna and George's extended two-wheel coterie.

I knew Edna for a number of months before I realized she was George's wife. She's model tall to his compact stature, platinum blonde to his weathered brownness. They've been together for more than four decades, since Edna was fifteen. George is riding a big, older Harley Ultra Classic. Edna's ride is just a bit more petite, a custom-built Barbie Harley. A Barbie doll is embedded on each side of the sparkling Pepto-pink gas tank. Edna's glitter-pink helmet and bubble gum–colored leather gloves are perfectly matched. She loves when little girls in cars see her, point at her, and wave. She always waves back. Over the course of this trip, countless men will ask to take a picture with her and her bike. She will accommodate them, but it's waving to the little girls who don't know until they see her that they can grow up to ride Barbie Harleys that will give her the most pleasure.

I am a woman who plans things down to the most microscopic detail. I have long believed that if I worry enough about something, I can keep it from happening. As a kid, my mother's chaotic behavior startled and often frightened me. My response was to try to manage my surroundings, to be as certain as possible as to what was to come.

This trip, I begin to see, is going to be an uncomfortable exercise in letting go, in welcoming the unknown.

Still, what surprises me most is the fact that I'm here in the first place. As I have explored my new obsession with motorcycles, I've
tried to sculpt this passion into some kind of coherent narrative, to find a way that it might add up and finally make sense. So far, I have failed. One thing I
have
learned, though, is that I am a novelty seeker, and in life, that's a good thing.

I imagine a twelve-step meeting in which those who share this trait tell our stories to each other, trying to understand how we got here and how to make sure this trait serves us rather than destroys us.

Hi. My name is Bernadette and I am a neophiliac.

Defined as a personality type characterized by a strong affinity for novelty, neophilia is at one end of a continuum experts call novelty or sensation seeking. It's a subset of what psychologists have named “The Big Five” inventory of personality traits. These five include (1) openness to experience, whether one is inventive and curious, or more consistent and cautious; (2) conscientiousness: one's inclination for efficiency and organization, as opposed to being easygoing and careless; (3) extraversion: whether one is outgoing and energetic or solitary and reserved; (4) agreeableness: how friendly and compassionate versus analytical and detached one is; and (5) neuroticism: one's degree of sensitivity and nervousness compared with feelings of security and confidence. You can take the Big Five personality test here:
www.outofservice.com/bigfive/
.

Risk taking and sensation seeking are part of openness to experience. This trait is characterized by an appreciation for emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, and art; unquenchable curiosity; and a draw toward a variety of experience.

When it comes to the terms
risk taking
,
sensation seeking
, and
novelty seeking
, a number of psychologists and psychiatrists all seem to be studying the same attribute, calling it by slightly different names and considering the trait in different ways in relation to overall personality studies. No matter what we call it, neophiliacs have a tendency to seek varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences and often take physical risks for the sake of having them. These experiences may take the form of extreme adventure activities such as skydiving, snowboarding, and mountain-climbing. But the trait also
expresses itself in unsafe drug, alcohol, or tobacco use, gambling and stock market speculation, and reckless sexual exploits. Men generally score higher than women for the trait, with sensation seeking typically increasing during childhood, peaking in the late teens or early twenties, and thereafter decreasing steadily with age.

Interestingly, researchers have found that those who demonstrate this openness to experience trait often align with liberal ethics and politics and enjoy thinking in abstractions and symbols. Those on the other end of the spectrum hew to conventional and traditional interests. Generally, they prefer that which is plain, straightforward, and obvious over the complex, ambiguous, and subtle. Closed people prefer familiarity rather than novelty and are resistant to change.

“Novelty seeking is the fundamental trait, and risk taking is one of its manifestations,” says Winifred Gallagher, whose book
New: Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change
focuses on this trait. As a species, we're highly neophilic—lovers of novelty—but as individuals, we differ by degree. Novelty seeking refers to the intensity of your attraction to things that are new and different. Someone at the low extreme of the spectrum avoids novelty and prefers the familiar, while someone at the other end actively pursues novelty and is bored with the routine. Most of us, of course, fall somewhere between those two poles.

Sensation seeking isn't simply craving new experiences and going after them, but the emotional intensity, energy, and concentration we bring to the experience and the passion that invigorates the pursuit, whether in work or sports, relationships or the arts, driving style or food preferences.

It doesn't matter if one is drawn to explore the great outdoors or the great books, “by becoming more curious and interested in life, you'll also have a more curious and interesting life,” says Paul Silvia, psychology professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. “The tendency to either approach or avoid novelty is the most important stable behavioral difference among individuals in the same species, period.”

When it comes to risk, we have to weigh our choices. Deciding to try something new might reward you in many ways: prestige, money, career success, or maybe a fabulous lover. Or, you could end up unhappy, frightened, broke, or humiliated.

Learning that novelty and anxiety are a package deal makes me feel better. Though I'm not as terrified each time I get on Izzy Bella these days, the fear still lurks. So why would anyone—why would I—try scary new things when fear is blocking the way? As it turns out, emotions like surprise, curiosity, and interest are more satisfying for some of us than fear is daunting, and that attraction pulls us over the fear threshold. These buoyant feelings are what inspire us to lean into something new. “Like a sip of champagne, bubbly curiosity lifts us out of quotidian reality and a business-as-usual mind-set and slips us into the
approach
reaction with the unfamiliar,” Gallagher says.